Edith Vanderbilt was the first woman to serve as president of the North Carolina State Fair. She was a vocal supporter of women's rights in the 1920s. / Special to the Citizen-Times

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Lady Edith Crawley (Laura Carmichael), jilted at the altar, is now becoming a crusader for equal rights for women in the England of the 1920s. / Carnival Films/PBS/Special to the Citizen-Times

EDITH VANDERBILT ON WOMEN’S RIGHTS

In the 1920s, Edith Vanderbilt took on a prominent public role in civic affairs at the state level. In 1921, she was elected the first female president of the N.C. State Fair, a position she held for four years. Edith used the fair as a platform on which to promote advancements in agriculture, industry and education. She also saw that she had a role to play in involving women in community affairs. In her induction speech given to the members of the state General Assembly, she announced, “This is a day when women have come into their own, and each one of us must shoulder her responsibilities along with the men and try to fulfill her duty to her community, state and country, at the same time remembering her obligations to her home. ... So, gentlemen, I at once assume responsibility in thanking you in the name of my fellow sisters for what you have done, for in conferring this distinction upon me, you have included them.” Find a “Downton Abbey” episode recap, with comments from Biltmore House curators, posted every Monday morning during this third season on CITIZEN-TIMES.com.

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To paraphrase Edgar Allan Poe: The thousand injuries of the 20th century Mr. Carson had borne as best he could, but when Mrs. Hughes ventured upon an electric toaster, he vowed revenge.

Well, maybe not “revenge,” exactly. But with the Crawley family’s Irish son-in-law hiding from the law upstairs, a scary-looking kitchen appliance downstairs is too much for the tradition-bound butler.

“Is it not enough that we’re harboring a dangerous revolutionary, Mrs. Hughes?” he says. “Could you not have spared me that?”

The third season of “Downton Abbey,” now at its halfway point, is all about the Earl of Grantham’s family and staff facing down rushing changes: A new generation taking over the estate upstairs, disruptive new servants downstairs, the Irish revolution and women’s suffrage spilling across the dining table, a fallen woman offending the help.

Similar rapid shifts swept over Biltmore House here in Asheville from its opening in 1895 through the early 20th century. Horses were replaced with automobiles; telephones became ubiquitous. In fact, George Vanderbilt had a phone installed in the sitting room of his housekeeper, Mrs. King, that connected directly to his own office, according to Biltmore chief curator Darren L. Poupore.

But Biltmore was ahead of Downton in many ways, having been built with electricity throughout, fully indoor plumbing and even an electric bell system to call the servants. (Downton’s bell system is still using string pulls, at least as far as we’ve seen so far.)

“I wonder what new servants thought when they came to Biltmore House, with its two electric elevators — probably the first they’d seen, certainly in a private home — a fully electrified house, central heat,” Poupore said. Watching Sunday’s show, he said, “I wondered, ‘How were the servants at Biltmore House at embracing new technology?’”

Alas, no early electric toasters survive in the Biltmore House collection — which is understandable, Poupore said. “Household appliances were probably just thrown out when they were replaced with newer technology.” Put another way, would you save an obsolete toaster?

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Roiling the family

The Crawleys seemed reasonably settled after the PBS series’ first two episodes of the new season, having quickly dispatched with both the succession question (Lady Mary marries titular heir, distant cousin and soul mate Matthew) and some monetary mishe-goss (Matthew conveniently inherits a mountain of money).

That’s the thing about British TV: The seasons are shorter, and there’s no dawdling over lesser plot lines. The first two seasons of “True Blood” on HBO covered less than half a year. On “Downton Abbey,” months pass between episodes, years fly by, children are sired illicitly and soon become toddlers.

And time inevitably brings, as one character puts it, “a spot of bother.” After all, in the words of the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), “No family’s ever what it seems from the outside.”

At least one family member remains miserable. Daughter Lady Edith, jilted at the altar in episode two and feeling useless, latches onto women’s rights as her latest cause, a public position that makes her father uncomfortable.

“I thought it was interesting that Lord Grantham was reading the paper at breakfast and commented on the passage of the 19th Amendment in the United States, giving women the right to vote,” Poupore said. Biltmore House’s mistress, Edith Vanderbilt “was a big proponent of women’s rights” — at least in the 1920s, when “Downton Abbey” season three is set.

It was then that Edith “was selected to be the first female president of the North Carolina State Fair,” he said, giving a speech on that occasion in which she declared that “women have come into their own” (see box on Page B4).

With the efficiency of a well-trained footman juggling platters, “Downton Abbey” on Sunday served up a full menu of plot points, of which Lady Edith was just an appetizer.

The show also plowed through Mr. Bates’ prison troubles (he’s cut off from mail and from seeing his wife, lady’s maid Anna), son-in-law Tom Branson’s escape from Ireland after participating in the burning of an Englishman’s estate, Matthew’s grappling with Downton’s management and the reappearance of fallen maid Ethel and her out-of-wedlock son.

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There’s also a hunky new servant who’s got the maids and gay valet Thomas swooning. “He looks like a footman in a musical revue,” the dowager quips.

Get it in writing

Letters, as always, play a major role. Not only are there Anna’s and Mr. Bates’, finally delivered in bundled stacks, there’s Ethel’s hand-delivered plea for her boy, and Lady Edith’s letter demanding the right to vote for all women, sent to a London newspaper.

And thank God for that, Poupore said. For a curator, letters are “critical” to reconstructing the past, and much of what is known about daily life at Biltmore House is thanks to “all these wonderful letters. ... We have all the incoming letters, of course, and we have worked hard to track down the letters written from Biltmore being received at other homes.

“In fact,” Poupore said, “we as curators and historians are worried about how we’re going to document the late 20th and 21st centuries when everything is (communicated) by email and text, and it’s not saved.”

Of course, not all letters are saved, either. Like those early Biltmore toasters, if they existed, many may simply have been tossed in the trash.

On “Downton Abbey,” though, a toaster is not just a toaster. At the end of the show, Mrs. Hughes burns some toast with her new contraption. Mr. Carson sniffs the air and comes running — the smoke not just a passing worry but a harbinger of the inevitability of change, and perhaps a frightening reminder of that burned English mansion in Ireland.

Downton Abbey will not burn, but neither will it stand unaltered. Tune in next week.